So What Kind of Rig Does Valve Use to Make Games?

valveAs we know, Valve makes PC games. Some rather sweet PC games. So, you know how when you sign on to Steam, and you always get bugged by that survey asking what kind of rig you have? Well, Valve’s got their own that they use to develop with, and they are quite beastly. Do any of you have comparable PC’s?

* EVGA 780i SLI FTW Intel Motherboard
* Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 2.83GHz Quad-Core Processor
* 4GB PC2-6400 DDR2 1066MHz ram
(Crucial Ballistix, Kingston ValueRam)
* 1 x NVidia GTX280 1GB – OR – ATI 4870 1GB graphics card
* 1 x 250GB 7200RPM SATA HD
(Seagate, Western Digital)
* 1 x 500GB 7200RPM SATA HD
(Seagate, Western Digital)
* Antec Sonata III desktop case
* Zalman CPU Cooler
* 850W Antec power supply
* 1 x Dell 3008FPW-HC 30″ LCD – OR – 2 x Dell 2001FP 20.1″ LCD monitors
* Windows XP 32bit

And if you think that’s good, wait until you see what they’re upgrading to…
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Rumor: GameStop, Steam and the Dawn of War II Mystery

dow2Man. Every time I think I’m starting to like GameStop a little more than I used to, they go ahead and do some foolish thing that reminds me why I constantly campaign against them in the first place. On top of overcharging for used video games, it seems the video game retail chain may now be blocking certain games due to their association with Steam.

Yes, you read that correctly. Kotaku is reporting that Dawn of War II pre-orders were recently removed from the company’s website, and the stores themselves are no longer taking pre-orders either. Why? A source close to the situation claims that it has to do with Dawn of War II being packaged with a mandatory install of Steam.

Once again, this is a rumor, but if it’s true, it’s just beyond me. It’d be one thing if it installed a Best Buy promotional offer, but GameStop, contrary to what it thinks, is NOT in a war against digital distributors. To me, anyone that was going to purchase games online is someone that you’re not losing brick-and-mortar sales to. I guess nobody told GameStop that digital distribution is the way of the future.

This is the corporate equivalent of “I’m going to take my ball and go home”. So what do you guys think?

Source- Kotaku

Valve Proves its BadAss-ness with Complete Pack

If you needed any further convincing, Valve has just confirmed that they are, in fact, complete and utter badasses. How did they do this? Well, first of all, by making some truly classic games, with a great track record. Second, for being the only gaming company that understands how its gamers want to use the Internet to buy things.

And lastly, the new Valve Complete Pack, which includes essentially every Valve game ever made, including Left 4 Dead and the Orange box, HL2, HL, CS, CSS, and all kinds of other things. How much does this cost you? $99. Seriously. It’s almost $140 in savings.

This is perfect for me because I actually don’t own the Orange Box and I was thinking about getting Left 4 Dead on the PC anyway. Anybody else going to hit Valve up on this?

Source- Steam